Missed Chances
by D.L. SchizoAuthoress
Summary: Introspective piece. Focuses on a young Adam Banks, mostly. Dedicated to geometrygal, for services rendered. ^_^


A/N: It needed to be done. Don't know if this POV has been done before, but it's only a one-shot. Hope it's a good one.  
  
****  
  
"My child arrived just the other day   
  
He came to the world in the usual way   
  
But there were planes to catch and bills to pay   
  
He learned to walk while I was away   
  
And he was talkin' 'fore I knew it, and as he grew   
  
He'd say 'I'm gonna be like you, dad,   
  
You know I'm gonna be like you.'  
  
And the cat's in the cradle and the silver spoon   
  
Little boy blue and the man on the moon   
  
When you comin' home dad?   
  
I don't know when, but we'll get together then, son   
  
You know we'll have a good time then..."  
  
-- from "Cat's in the Cradle" by James Taylor  
  
****  
  
"Missed Chances" (a mighty ducks fanfic by SchizoAuthoress)  
  
~`~Dedicated to Britts, AKA geometry gal~`~  
  
I was there for Danny.  
  
With Danny, everything was amazing and new. Everything from his first step to his first word--it was "Da!"--to his first fingerpainting. And then, when business got in the way, it was all right, because no matter what Danny wanted to do, I'd support him.   
  
Then Adam came along. He took his first steps when I was in New York for the firm's annual meeting to review the fiscal year; I saw the video tape when I got home, but I was disinterested. I'd seen it before, and he was running around the house now, so what did it matter? His first word was "Okee." Whatever I told him to do, whatever his mother or brother told him to do, it was "Okee," "Okee, Mama," "Okee, Dan." He was a very agreeable child. There was never any trouble from him.   
  
He followed Danny everywhere. He followed Danny to the first Hawks practice Danny had, walking out onto the ice in his new sneakers and falling down immediately. The way Angela told it, he didn't cry. He sat there and called, "Danny, Danny," until his big brother turned around and helped him off the ice.  
  
When I came home, Adam was always bursting to tell me stories that invariably began with "Me and Danny..."  
  
Me and Danny.   
  
Eventually, I stopped thinking of Adam as his own person. Danny was The Son. Adam was...I don't even know what I thought of Adam as. 'The heir and the spare,' I suppose, like Princes William and Harry.  
  
I never stopped to ask anyone whether Adam had any dreams other than hockey. I assumed that, since his older brother had been a hockey player--a Hawk--that Adam wanted to be a Hawk as well. What if he wanted to play baseball? What if he wanted to be an artist? What if he wanted to play a musical instrument? I didn't know, and I didn't care.   
  
No, forget not caring. The possibility that Adam would be someone other than a star player for the Haeks never crossed my mind, so how could I care if he wanted something different? Something else.  
  
He never complained. I told him that I would love to see him be a hockey player like his brother. "Okay, Dad," he said to me, "could you take me to buy the stuff I need?" I think that that was the only time we did something together, just the two of us. We bought hockey equipment that I didn't even know if he really wanted.   
  
Sometimes now, when I sit alone in my office with nothing to do for a few minutes, I feel guilty. All Adam ever wanted to do was please me. I could have told him to dye his hair pink and walk around the Mall of America naked, and he probably would have done it if he thought it would make me happy. If he thought it would make me love him as much as I loved Danny. Because I think he knew. In a way, without anyone having to tell him so, he knew that Danny had the first place in my heart, behind Angela.   
  
And I remember once, I was home for the first time in two weeks. Adam was six or seven years old, and when eight-thirty rolled around Angela told him to get ready for bed. He looked at me and said softly, "Daddy, I wanna stay up with you. Just for a little bit."  
  
"Your mother said that it was bedtime," was all I said to him, and he looked down, nodded, and went down the hall to the bathroom. I didn't see it then, but looking back it hurts to realize...his eyes held this terrible longing, 'Daddy, tell me that you missed me. Tell me that you want me to stay up a little longer because you missed me as much as I missed you.'  
  
I don't know when he stopped missing me.  
  
But he doesn't seem to notice as much, or care, anymore whether I am at home or not. He gives me a vague smile and asks when I got in, but he isn't really listening when I tell him. When I tell Angela over dinner some of the things that happened to me on the latest business trip, he doesn't put down his fork and listen with rapt attention anymore. He waits until I am finished and begins a story about what he and his friends did recently, telling his mother, not me. He no longer takes pains to make me notice him.   
  
He became just like me.  
  
And it hurts.  
  
~*~Finis~*~ 


End file.
